[Techtalk] External 56k modem

[Malcolm Tredinnick]

On Mon, 2003-06-30 at 10:51, Staci wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> I recently decided (due to budgetary constraints) to get rid of my cable-modem til fall and go back to dial-up
> for a while.
> 
> I got the serial modem, I've got the kernel-drivers built-in, it dials, it answers, it handshakes...and chokes.
> 45 seconds or so after it goes quiet, it just disconnects.
> But I know I have the authentication protocol right, and my friend said he had the modem working before so it
> shouldn't be the hardware, and I even had someone else double-check and make sure I had the drivers.
> 
> Using KPPP it just resets and tries to redial, using WvDial it "times out" and then can't seem to get a
> dial-tone to try again.  I did try setting the kppp timeout to some huge ungodly number of minutes, but it
> didn't help.

> Does anyone have any ideas what to try next?
> I can get another modem but it'll be a hassle and I'd much rather make this one work. :/

For things like pppd, there is always a debug option you can turn on.
Not sure how wvdial or kppp do things, but if they use pppd under the
covers, try turning on any debug options. Then set up syslog to log
things at the debug level to (for example) /var/log/debug. That will
dump quite a lot of stuff, including any control messages thatgo
backwards and forwards.

If you can get that far, you should be able to see what kind of messages
are going through before things sieze up. I am not sure where you can go
exactly from there, but if might give you/us some clues.

Malcolm